Monday, July 4th, 2022
Dear Freedom Friends,
Hereâs a question worth asking: who benefits most from the massive shift of adult women out of American homes and into the corporate/industrialized work force?
I grew up in the latch-key generation of kids born to women ârecently liberatedâ from the tyranny of domesticity. We came home to empty houses, cold kitchens and rules. Lock the door. Donât answer the door. Donât answer the phone, either! Call 911 if someone tries to get into the house. Stay indoors, grab a snack & do your homework. Alone.
Once, when I was seven, some Mormon Missionaries came to the house and knocked on the door. They were dressed in black suits and I (being seven) decided they were mafia thugs intent upon robbing the house and murdering me. I slipped out the back door, climbed over five back yard fences, evaded one very aggressive dog, and fled to the one house in the neighborhood where a Mom stayed home. Her daughterâs name was Lisa and I remember they always had homemade cake for a treat after school. For a few years, I wanted to be named Lisa. I wonder why?
By the way. I got in trouble for fleeing to the neighborâs house. I was seven. How is that fair? How is that good, natural or healthy? What human child was EVER left along, in the village, to wait for the entire tribe to return? None. There was always someone around, even if just the elders doing the baby sitting (and yeah, one of these days Iâll write about the insanity of modern grandparents living separately from their grandchildren).
Children need more nurturing than our ârat race cultureâ allots to them. Period.
One of the âgemsâ to come out of the Americana Womenâs Lib Movement is the endlessly problematic concept of âQuality Time.â This article actually has some great ideas for balancing the modern lifestyle, BUT it begins and ends with shocking statements that boggle the imagination and seem designed to serve a âkeep parents workingâ political ideology.
As a stay-at-home Mom, Iâm calling her out on that BS (andâŚbtw, you put the period inside the closing quotation marks).
Iâve spent 24 years wondering how women manage to raise their kids and work a full time job (plus the commute), and Iâm wondering that because I was the Mom who was there for my kids (and all of their friends) day in and day out. Kids take time! Lots of it, and I absolutely had more time to give because I wasnât giving my time to someone else for a paycheck.
This, of course, was a privilege as much as a choice. Not all mothers have the option, and I appreciate that this was a choice I could make, but at the same time, I am deeply frustrated by the perception that I wasnât doing honest work. Worse. Apparently, I wasnât working at all.
The other day, I overheard my 20 year old talking to his friend about his childhood. He said, âMy Mom didnât work, she just stayed home and raised us.â
Iâm not mad at my son. I am completely unsurprised, actually, because this is THE deeply flawed perception that all women are now up against. From men. From bosses. From children. And most galling, from other women.
(1) We now live in a culture where the âwork of the homeâ is so secondary to the work that brings in money that no one is even officially assigned the job.
(1.5) What then, does it say, that this work is instead mostly done by women, in 2-income households, as if itâs a mere second hand thought, while the men more typically rest from their labors?
(2) We have women struggling to compete against men in the work environment, while pregnant, nursing and typically being the primary emotional caregiver to their children at home.
(3) We have both parents juggling the demands of their job with the demands of their children, consistently feeling like failures because neither of them are there enough for the kids, and then the âexpertsâ tell them that the time they DO spend with the kids isnât enough. It has to be âqualityâ time.
(4) And, I can tell you from personal experience, that the women who work for the betterment of their family are either envied or looked oddly at by women who work for a paycheck, and no amount of volunteerism, community organizing or care-taking of other peopleâs kids will ever make up for the sin of being a âwoman of leisure.â
Because, we donât work, remember? And thereâs the whole, laying around eating Bon-Bons thing, too.
(Huge. Fucking. Eye. Roll.)
Iâm a work-aholic. I never stop going. Energizer Bunny and I are definitely related. While âraising my boys,â I ran four different businesses, washed dishes until my skin was raw, gardened until my back ached and my neck was thrown out, baked, cooked, managed every single doctor and dental visit (including 100% of the emergencies), homeschooled my kids, managed their 4-year competitive gymnastics experience, volunteered and participated and performed with my kids in the local Theater Group, raised hundreds of chickens, fed and managed vet visits for multiple dogs, a dozen pet rats, three cats, three horses and so on and so forth. Solar panels and roofing and house painting - check! Produce a local radio show? Check! Spent 500+ hours as Lead Area Caucus Coordinator for my island? Check! Refurbished kitchen (when the sink died, not by choice), carpet replaced (rescue dog with pee issues), and blah, blah, blah! The list could go on. You know the drill. But, hey. I didnât work, in my sonâs eyes, because my society says âitâs not work unless you get paid.â
Of course, this is mostly a middle class predicament. Poor women have almost always worked outside of the home. As wet nurses for rich women, house servants, scullery and milk maids, prostitutes, laborers on the farm or selling at market, musicians, circus performers, artisans, bakers, the list goes on.
Therefore, if the Americana Womenâs Liberation Movement was making life better, shouldnât we see (1) fewer women within lower economic classes leaving their kids at home to go to work and (2) those middle class women who feel like staying home to manage the complicated affairs of family life & community-building, feeling appreciated when they make that choice? Yes! But, we donât.
We see ALL women being pressured into fueling the for-profit, endless-consumption, industrial machine. We arenât working to get ahead. We are working so that we can fulfill our role as endless consumers.
The female sphere of influence & work â all incredibly important, hard and honorable work â has been reduced to nothing more than a perception of âgrunt labor by ignorant women kept barefoot and pregnant.â There was no skill, nothing to admire, no reason to feel proud and certainly no sense of joy in a job well done. To be âall you could beâ we told multiple generations of children (male and female alike) you must leave the children, the pets, the home and myriad domestic skills behind.
And for what? To enter the world of industrialization & out of control capitalism as a cog in an inhumane wheel that cares not whether you get chewed up in the gears along the way.
We were tricked, my dear friends, into becoming wage earners for an industry that then created a society that IS the very definition of âThe Company Store.â You know, that place where you spend every penny you earn and have nothing left to show for a life spent slaving away for âthe man.â We havenât moved upward so much as sideways from the stereotype of the dismissive, arrogant, abusive and unappreciative husband to the same treatment from our boss. Of course, itâs much better now than it was during in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980sâŚbut we still donât have enough enough time with our children. And, we still come home to a house that needs tending!
Then, the government/industrial schools demean parents, for failing their kids? Because, working parents clearly donât care enough, donât do enough, and itâs the fault of âthe parentsâ that the kids canât read? Maybe (this is actually being proposed) the government schools (who canât teach your kid to read during the 40 hours a week they have control of your kidâs life) should have more rights over your children than you do?
Do you see how the slope is tilting and getting steeper and steeper and steeper?
Who thinks kids might benefit from riding home on the bus, after a long 8 hour day, knowing that a parent (either one, I donât care) is actually tending the hearth? That the home, the kids, the garden, the pets and all the rest of it are worthy of care and are the primary province of someoneâs attention? I DO.
It may seem small, but in truth, reclaiming the power of the home is HUGE. From food (natural ingredients, freshly harvested fruits and veggies, the skills of blending, stirring, chilling, baking, sauteing, braising, rising, rolling out crust and preserving the results of your labor) to the skill of sewing your childâs ripped pant leg or knitting them a scarf they will treasure for years to comeâŚhomemaking is a source of power that I (for one) am unwilling to relinquish.
When you look back on human history, what do you envision? I do not think of wars, empires, kings and conquest. I think of the incredible skills that people have leaned upon for eons. And much of it deals with food.
My Saturday Morning Recipes will often be an homage to kitchen wisdom that we would do well to intentionally not lose.
But, today, Iâm also sharing my thoughts about how the industrialization of food may have actually created a cool outcome!
This recipe will prove that homemade brownies ABSOLUTELY CAN kick box brownie butt!
https://www.loveandlemons.com/brownies-recipe/
But, how did âbox browniesâ come to be any different than homemade brownies? I donât know for sure, but I have a working theory. Traditional, homemade brownies often claim to be gooey, chewy and all that weâve come to expect from box brownies. Iâve tried a few dozen recipes and never found it to be the case. They are always cakey, dry, crumbly or super dense. And Iâm a good baker!
Iâd sort of given up, but then I stumbled upon this recipe. OMG. And, what do you think the key ingredient is, that makes these brownies so perfectly box-ilicious? Corn Starch.
Specifically, the corn starch thatâs present in powdered sugar, which this recipe calls for (in addition to normal sugar). And, what do you need in a box brownie product thatâs going to sit on a shelf for weeks or months at a time? An anti-caking ingredient, so the mix comes out of the box ready to go. And whatâs an anti-caking ingredient? Corn Starch!
Itâs my theory that corn starch (either directly or within powdered sugar) was added to make the box brownie mix more shelf-stable and from this, we have been gifted the unexpected benefit of BOX BROWNIE CONSISTENCY!
My dear friendsâŚgo to the above link, and prepare to have your mind blown. Please do comment below, and share your homemade brownies cooked in your own kitchen experience! Iâm super curious to hear how it goes!
And, of course, as a âhomemade versionâ you can source the best oils (I use olive oil), the best eggs (from my own flock), the best flour (organic!), the best vanilla (Iâve got my own vodka soaking Madagascar beans), the best sugars (make sure the powdered sugar gets into the recipe and that itâs got corn starch in it - I think they all do?) and the best chocolate chips! Yummy, gooey, chewy and organic/free range/locally sourced/whatever you care about!
My time saving trick? Make 2-3 batches at once, then freeze them for âon the goâ snacks! Also, I end up eating less when theyâre in the chest freezer way out in the garageâŚthan if theyâre just sitting around getting stale and begging to be eaten.
Okay. A bit more on the healthy side, what exactly is a Garlic Snape? Itâs the early flower stem, usually bent and definitely not blooming, of a garlic bulb. You want to snap it off, so the plant puts energy into the bulb (which youâll harvest in late Spring).
What to do with it, though? Well, you can chop it up and throw it into a stir-fry or fresh into your salad or add to a soup, etc. But, at a recent âFreedom Friendsâ meeting, a lovely woman brought âMint Roasted Garlic Snapes,â and I about died. Simple! Lay them on a cookie sheet, brush or drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle salt and finely chopped mint leaves, then roast until they are as done as you want them. YUM!
Perfect on their own, or toss on a salad, or maybe add to a bread and cheese platter? The garlic snapes are below, at the bottom of the photo, and a lot of people donât know what to do with them â so if you donât garden yourself, your gardening friends may be happy to share their snapes with you, in exchange for this recipe!
And, thatâs me. For today. Be well. Respect your work. Even if no one pays you. Oneâs worth can never be adequately expressed with money. Remember that.
Mattias Desmet wrote about "bullshit jobs," the title of a book by David Graeber. From a random sample of people, asked whether they thought their jobs made a meaningful contribution to society, 37% said no and 13% were unsure. I wonder how many women, who feel that way about their paid employment, still think what they are doing is more important than raising children.
Reminder: motherhood is humanity's highest calling.